


You Wait for Something to Undo These Feelings

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:15:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22199986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: The first time Jesse McCree hits on him, he’s still bleeding from where Gabriel pistol whipped him before slapping the cuffs on.
Relationships: Jesse McCree & Reaper | Gabriel Reyes, Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 18
Kudos: 108





	You Wait for Something to Undo These Feelings

**Author's Note:**

> just a lil thing written forever ago that I rediscovered recently
> 
> title from Wolf Alice's [Moaning Lisa Smile](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z71df68qLp0)

The first time Jesse McCree hits on him, he’s still bleeding from where Gabriel pistol whipped him before slapping the cuffs on. 

He grins up at Gabriel through his lashes, blood filling the spaces between his teeth as his hat slides down his forehead, and asks if he wants to do that again but slower.

Gabriel just shoves him forward, up the gangplank that leads to the Orca. _Are you serious?_ he can already hear Jack saying. _The amount of time and money it’s going to take to train him up and civilize him, when we just got in four recruits from the SAS! Why not one of them?_

SAS soldiers don’t have flexibility. They aren’t willing to say ‘fuck you’ to their commander because they have a better plan. They’re not willing to fall in bed with someone and break their neck in the morning in order to get what they need. 

Maybe it’s going to take time and money and god knows how many showers, but Gabriel’s pretty sure he can turn Jesse McCree into a weapon built to his own specifications.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse does well, surprising everyone - including Jesse. It turns out that just a bit of encouragement and grudging praise is enough to make him work his ass off, bolstered by a determination to show the recruits who had been to the very best of schools that a good eye and a quick mind was better than any expensive education. Gabriel checks in on his progress every now and then, seeing if his impulsive choice is working out. 

It has been. 

Jesse fills out, gets sharper, grasps the delicate dance of attack and retreat so he can strategize instead of just react. He does well enough that after a few years Gabriel calls him in for a meeting. The words ‘strike team’ and ‘elite’ are mentioned, as well as ‘fuck up’ and ‘supermax’. It’s mostly for show though, and they both know it. Jesse doesn’t get in trouble when he’s given something to do, and there’s always something to do in Blackwatch. Someone to hoodwink, someone to bribe, someone to kill. Jesse’s going to fit in just fine.

Gabriel stands to walk Jesse to the door. Jesse lags a step, gets too close to Gabriel. It’s startling, that he’s as tall as Gabriel now and nearly as broad. He gives Gabriel a slow, slow smirk, tugged up around his ever-present cigar. Gabriel shuts it down with a word, but there’s a moment’s pause before he does. It’s nothing, just a bare second, but it’s enough to let Jesse saunter out the door and not lose the smile.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse gambles.

He bets on cards and horses and darts and whatever Genji is throwing that day. He smokes enough that Angela has come to Gabriel worried about his lungs, he drinks enough that he’s always put on bar missions because his tolerance is so high, and he fights enough that new recruits are given warnings about him. 

The one thing he doesn’t do is sleep around. 

Jesse McCree is certainly no blushing virgin, Gabriel’s seen his medical records and knows that ship sailed long before Blackwatch. He’s charming enough that he’s often sent to seduce this or that person, and he does it with an easy smile and a wink. On base though, he doesn’t really react to the looks he gets, the invitations to sit in the mess hall, the sparring with just a bit too much grappling. It all just...slides off him, somehow. He doesn’t turn people down, he just moves sideways, slips around so another person is in his place. 

But he looks, oh how he _looks_. 

At Gabriel. 

Always at Gabriel. When Gabriel is in the room Jesse is always turned towards him just a bit, always aware of where he is in the space, half-anticipating where he’ll be next. 

The upside is that they work incredibly well together on missions, a well-oiled machine of two parts that rain destruction on everything in their way. The downside is that, well. Gabriel likes Jesse, but he’s still so young. He’s in his mid-twenties, he should be out finding a nice girl or boy or whomever and buying them drinks and making them laugh, he shouldn’t be sight-locked on a battered soldier two decades his elder. 

But still, Jesse looks.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Somehow, Jesse settles. He mostly stops the gambling, tones down the drinking. The smoking stays, but you can’t win them all. They settle as a group, too: their strike team, filled out with people that die off like mayflies for years, finally gels with Genji and Moira. Blackwatch as a whole starts calming down, and - god help him - Gabriel has to attribute some of that to Jesse.

He’s good at people, at the social intricacies in a way that Gabriel never has been. Gabriel can take one look at a person and know where to point them like an airstrike, but Jesse knows how to take the way they interact with others and twist it so the enemy will practically shoot themselves. Jesse is more centered now, turned in towards himself in a room and not towards Gabriel.

Jesse finds his place at Gabriel’s right hand, and it’s like he was made for it.

Gabriel looks too, now. He watches at how comfortable Jesse is with the organization, at how he balances his position of unofficial authority with being just another team member to put everyone at ease. He watches as he lets down his slippery smiling barriers, finally making true friends in the group. He watches as he gets closer to his team, tolerating Moira as best he can and spending long, long hours working and laughing with Genji both on- and off-duty.

Gabriel looks, and Gabriel wants.

He can’t use the excuse of youth any more, can barely use the excuse of being in power given how they work and argue and fit together. For the first time in decades Gabriel lets himself indulge in the way someone laughs, in the way his eyes crinkle when he smiles, in how his uniform fits him so very well. He watches how Jesse's lips fit around his cigar, how his hair will fall in his face, how his long fingers will wrap around Genji's wrist.

Without quite meaning to, without really knowing how it happens, Gabriel Reyes falls in love.

And so does Jesse McCree.

Just -

Just not with Gabriel.

**Author's Note:**

> whoops
> 
> thanks for reading, come yell at me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


End file.
